A Measure of Happiness

by Lorrie Thomson

  “I’m sorry!” Blake said. “I didn’t do anything! It’s his own fault. He grabbed me off the shelf. If he hadn’t—”

  “You little shit,” Celeste said.

  White noise whirred in Katherine’s ears. The sound of twisted logic tying a knot in her gut. Some things never changed.

  Katherine rounded on Blake. “Not Zach’s pain and suffering. Mine.” She held her hands out, flexed them, took a step back. Took a breath. “I’ll meet you in Brunswick,” she told Zach and Celeste, and forced a smile. “Drive safely.”

  Katherine brushed the flop of dark hair from in front of Zach’s eyes.

  Zach met her gaze. “Thanks, Katherine,” he said, not drawing out the pronunciation, like Adam. Zach spoke her name with his own unique voice.

  “Be careful going over bumps,” Katherine said, thinking of her harried drive to Brunswick Hospital and the way her contractions had refused to synch with frost heaves and impatient motorists.

  “I’ll take good care of him,” Celeste said.

  “I know you will.”

  “Sorry about the accident,” Blake said.

  Accident? More like the on purpose. This time, Katherine did indulge in an eye roll.

  Zach grinned. “In the famous words of Moe to Shemp, ‘It’s okay, kid. Accidents happen.’”

  Celeste laughed and pantomimed swinging a bat or an ax or something. Katherine had no clue. She’d never cared for the Three Stooges, never understood the humor of violence.

  Katherine restrained herself from going after Blake. Going after Blake and cleaning up after him.

  Instead, she forced herself to watch while he attempted to follow her instructions. Thus far, he’d swept and mopped the café twice, because the first pass had left the grit of sugar underfoot and glass winking from the corners. Perspiration dotted his brow.

  She’d needed the time to calm down, to talk sense to the voices in her head that replayed the way she’d felt the first time she’d found her shop burgled, the sense of violation and paranoia that had echoed from the incident, waves that affected her to this day. Finding her shop broken into a second time had only confirmed her fears, her adrenal glands primed and ready for overdrive, stoking her original trauma.

  And all because of a boy, a scrawny teenager with ill manners, dirty nails, and a warped sense of retaliation. It was like finding out the boogeyman was a sham, a bug you could squash with the tip of your shoe. It was like discovering Oz, the all-powerful wizard, was nothing but an ordinary man who’d lost his way. The overarching lesson from the universe reminded Katherine of her father.

  Boy, would Barry ever have a field day with that one. Katherine, the baby of her family, had a daddy complex. Or did she have a complex daddy?

  His bark is worse than his bite, Katherine’s mother used to say. Short-term, this had proven true. Long-term? Not so much.

  Outside the café, the streetlamps began to light, sundown coming earlier and earlier. The way the seasons worked never failed to surprise Katherine, changing faster every year, as much a delight as a fright. And a reminder that she wasn’t getting any younger.

  The phone hung on the wall behind the register, a black retro reproduction you had to dial by hand or pencil. She could call Barry—seven little numbers, seven spins of the dial. She could tell him about Blake and the break-in—the break-ins—and ask Barry to handle this clearly damaged child, way out of her comfort zone.

  Barry never said no.

  She indulged in the fantasy—Barry dashing through the door, the bell jingling in his wake. The two of them embracing, the solid comfort of his body against hers. He’d sit down with Blake and draw out his sweetness. He’d draw out her sweetness.

  Or she could, for once, be fair to Barry, leave him alone, and attempt to channel his shrink wisdom.

  Her stomach grumbled. Her head ached, a vice-like pressure against her temples. Her last meal, if you wanted to call it a meal, had been a serving of pie and ice cream. So much for her so-called diet. Might as well shoot it to hell.

  She checked her watch. Ten minutes before seven. She had just enough time for a quick bite, a quicker chat, and a race to the hospital.

  The image of Zach’s angled wrist flashed across her internal vision, and a pain spiked her wrist. She wrapped her hand around the ache, and the pain subsided.

  “Blake,” Katherine said, and the boy startled from his thoughts. What they might be, Katherine hadn’t a clue. “That’s enough for today. What’s your poison? Apple or pumpkin?”

  “Apple,” Blake said.

  “Me too.” She cut two generous servings and sat down in the booth Blake had previously damaged. If the booth choice threw him off, all the better.

  Blake waited for her to dig in before he took his first bite. Then he attacked the pie, bending his head to the plate, as if he were starving. Was he?

  Katherine chewed slowly. “You did a nice job cleaning up the mess you created.”

  Blake glanced up at her, sidelong and wary, and then went back to the pie.

  “How do you suppose we deal with your incidents?”

  Here Blake paused, his fork hovering over the plate.

  Barry probably wouldn’t have used the word incidents. Too circumspect and vague. She’d get to the point. “How are you going to pay me back for the property damage?”

  Blake glanced right and left, as though searching for an answer.

  “Okay, well. Let’s get specific.” Would Barry say specific? “Your previous break-in tantrum cost me . . .” She slid a pencil from her back pocket, swiped a napkin from the holder, and scratched out $250. She held up the napkin like a flash card.

  “No.”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve checked and rechecked the figures.” Plus, she’d paid the bills. “The sugar dispensers you’re so awfully fond of smashing run a dollar thirty-nine apiece. Beginning of the month, you demolished eight of them. . . .”

  Blake’s mouth went slack, and he glanced to the ceiling. “Eleven dollars and twelve cents.”

  “Yes. Impressive,” she said.

  The left side of Blake’s lips twitched upward, as though he was unsure whether she was generously praising his math skills or sarcastically lauding his destruction.

  To the boy’s credit, he didn’t attempt to deny the earlier break-in. “The paint to cover your graffiti cost fifteen dollars a gallon,” Katherine said. “I needed two gallons, due to the pale color. And let’s not forget your crowning achievement—”

  Blake lowered his fork. The tines tapped against the plate, a wordless plea. His eyes widened, huge, like an infant’s. Like the child that he was. The frightened child.

  Why? She thought she was being straightforward. Was something in her tone or expression scaring him?

  Good lord, what if she wasn’t channeling Barry? What if she was channeling her father?

  She hiccupped, bitter apple liquid refluxed, and she covered her mouth. She swallowed, and her eyes watered.

  Blake’s expression remained unchanged, hinged and waiting for her to unhinge him. Fifteen years old and he reeked of cigarettes, shame, and fear.

  From the time Katherine had been in preschool, her mother had doused her with Jean Naté after bath splash, futile against a house that stank. Yet Katherine had always been taken with scents and aromas. Their ability to conjure emotion. Their ability to cover up or attempt to conceal.

  “Here’s my proposal,” Katherine said. “You’ll work for me until you pay off your debt. Stop by tomorrow after school and we’ll figure it all out.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay. . . . Well, then,” she said, and gave the tabletop a pat. “I should get going to the hospital. I’ll drop you off at your house on the way.”

  “Thanks,” Blake said, and he attempted a smile.

  “One more thing,” she said, careful to lighten her tone so her words wouldn’t weigh too heavily upon him. “I need to talk to your parents. They should know what happened here today, and our arrangement.” Kather
ine nodded, stood, and took her plate.

  Blake gazed up at her and simultaneously sank in his seat. “I’d rather go to jail.”

  Katherine sat back down. “Why is that?”

  Blake’s mouth worked around words unspoken. He shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  Barry would ask open-ended questions, gently drawing out the patient’s answer, an extended analysis that could take years. Katherine didn’t have that kind of time. She had, by her estimate, about ten minutes before she needed to hightail it to Brunswick Hospital, Celeste, and Zach.

  Katherine’s chest pounded with the desire to conceal. “Until I was twelve, my family ate dinner together every night,” she said. “Sounds nice, right?”

  Blake shrugged. “I guess.”

  “It wasn’t nice at all. My father made me and my sister tell him our favorite thing that had happened to us that day,” she said, and the muscles in her back clutched, as though she were still trying to defend her irrational happiness.

  “So?”

  “Then he’d very patiently tell us why we were mistaken. If I got a good grade on a paper, he’d say the teacher was messing with my head, teaching the class wrong. Or, if the teacher was a man, he’d suggest the teacher wanted something inappropriate from me.”

  “Sounds weird.”

  “Yeah, weird.” Katherine’s shoulders rose on a breath. “When I complained about my father’s smoking, he dared me to smoke a cigarette with him.” She shook her head. “Sorry. That was a lie. Dare isn’t the right word. He wouldn’t let me leave the house until I’d smoked it to the filter.”

  “Then he let you go?”

  “Yes and no. I was too sick to get off the bathroom floor.” Katherine had laid her face on the floor, the cold tile numbing her cheek and temple, and focused on a stain clouding the underside of the sink. The more she focused, the more the shape shifted, morphing from a bunny to a bat, a winged angel to a horned devil.

  She’d been a year younger than Blake.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Blake said. “You didn’t like him smoking, so he made you smoke?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to get me hooked, so I’d shut up complaining and join him. Hard to say what’s going on in someone else’s mind, right?”

  “When I first told my father I wanted to get a job to help out, he thought it was a great idea,” Blake said. “For about half a second. Then he told me I was too stupid to get a job. He was all—” Blake went into character. He actually appeared bigger, meaner. His chest puffed out, his teeth bared, and he came out of his seat. He deepened his voice. “‘What a joke! Who in their right mind would hire a loser like you? Who the hell do you think you are? Who the hell do you think you are?’”

  Blake made a sound, part chuckle, part oomph of surprise. He sat back down. He laid a shaking hand on the table, stared down at it as though it weren’t connected to him, as though it were an embarrassment he wished he’d left behind.

  Katherine placed her hand over Blake’s and looked the child in the eye. Her ears clicked with the congestion of wanting to cry. “We’ll keep our arrangement just between us then,” she said. “Our little secret.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The ghost of Katherine’s past followed her from the end of Blake’s wooded driveway on Route 216 to the gates of Brunswick Hospital.

  Nearly twenty-four years ago, she’d awoken at three-fifteen, same as every workday, and waddled to the bathroom. Stepped carefully over the tub and into the bliss of warm water. Then the first pain had stabbed, and she’d bled. Orange droplets splashed the white ceramic, making the labor, the delivery, and her plan suddenly, horribly real.

  Hazel May had offered to meet her at the hospital when it was “time.” She’d volunteered to sit by her side and hold her hand. Even more amazing, Katherine’s mentor had suggested she close the bakery for the day and take a hit on her livelihood. They’d discussed this day months ago. They’d made a plan. They’d both agreed. But when that first contraction had gripped, Katherine had chosen to go it alone.

  When you knowingly, willingly planned to do the worst thing you’d ever done to someone you loved, did you really want a witness?

  Cotton pad between her legs, she’d tossed an overnight bag in the backseat of her car and hit the road running. She’d sped all the way to Brunswick with the white of her headlights burning through the dark winter morning, contractions cresting ten minutes apart, as if by exceeding the speed limit, she could outrun her pain.

  Now Katherine parked in the visitors’ lot and ran through the gray streetlight shadows to the ER entrance. She’d sent Celeste and Zach ahead of her, so certain that taking the time to “deal with” Blake had been not only the right choice but the only choice.

  Her own twisted logic tied her stomach in knots. In trying to do the right thing, had she given both Celeste and Zach the short end of her decision?

  She could’ve waited to supervise the bakery cleanup. The whole Blake conversation, as enlightening to the boy’s family situation as it had been, could’ve taken place at a later date. Hadn’t she warned Zach that Celeste wasn’t as tough as she seemed? Hadn’t she worried about Zach? And yet Katherine had sent both of them away, as if she didn’t even know her own mind.

  Katherine pushed through the revolving door and blinked against the brightness, the switch from night road to parking lot to artificial daylight. Equally artificial warmth replaced the crisp chill of fall. And the air’s equally crisp smell gave way to pine cleaner and stale cafeteria odors.

  Three floors above, Katherine had given birth, her mind flooded with thoughts of her body’s betrayal. Why was her labor progressing so quickly, the contractions coming one on top of the other, no time to catch her breath or reconsider her decision? Three pushes, and Zach had emerged, sweet and smiling, with barely a whimper.

  He’d barely whimpered when he’d broken his wrist. Yet that must’ve hurt like hell.

  In the ER waiting room, an old woman slept with her mouth open and her head on a middle-aged man’s shoulder. A young couple huddled with preschool children—a boy for her and a girl for him—on their knees. Celeste sat between two empty seats, twisting her kerchief in her lap. Her hair spilled before her eyes.

  “How many times do I need to tell you to keep your hair off your face?” Katherine asked.

  Celeste looked up. “Everyone’s a comedian.”

  “I’ve been accused of worse,” Katherine said. “Where’s the patient?”

  “X-ray.” Celeste folded the kerchief, fit it over her hair, and held out the ends for tying. “Could you?”

  “Of course.” Katherine sat sideways on the plastic seat beside Celeste.

  “My mom used to do my hair, when I was little,” Celeste said.

  “Mine too,” Katherine said, conjuring an image of her mother’s slender fingers, the tickle of her breath on Katherine’s cheek, the warmth of her love. “I used to ask for two braids. They always came out uneven and crooked, but I never complained.” Katherine took the twisted ends of the cloth and quelled the urge to kiss the top of Celeste’s head, the way her mother had kissed hers. Celeste’s fingers trembled. From worry or malnutrition?

  Katherine fit the cloth ends beneath Celeste’s hair, making sure none of the baby hairs caught in the fabric. She fastened the ends and straightened the kerchief. “I’m really hungry,” Katherine said, although her stomach was pleasantly full with pie. “I’m going to go search for a snack. Can I get you something to eat?”

  Celeste’s figure wasn’t overly slender; she didn’t have that body type. But with her hair held back, her eyes looked huge, too big for her face, like those poor starving children you saw in ads for humanitarian aid. Her gaze slipped to the arm of the chair between them and then came back to Katherine. “Can’t. I’m too hungry,” she whispered.

  “Too hungry to eat?” Katherine asked, her voice a hush.

  Celeste nodded, quick as a blink. “I’
m queasy. If I eat something, I could, you know . . .” She swallowed and arched her hand from her belly to her mouth.

  Throw up.

  When Katherine had been pregnant, she was hungry all the time—ferociously and legitimately. She’d been, after all, eating for two. But sometimes, like Celeste, she’d work long hours, thinking she’d eat on her break, a nonspecific time that followed the needs of the bakery rather than her body. Then she’d end up in trouble. On her knees, porcelain trouble.

  “I know what you need.” Katherine stood and brushed off her jeans—from what, she’d no idea. “Sit tight. I’ll be right back.”

  Katherine followed the signs partway to the cafeteria and ducked into an enclave of vending machines. She scanned the selections. Plain Lay’s potato chips and cans of Canada Dry ginger ale. Yes, perfect. She fed the machines and hurried back to the waiting room, sneakers slapping the floor.

  Katherine held the chips and soda before Celeste. “Starch, sugar, and salt. Plus bubbles. What do you think? Did I do good or what?”

  Celeste eyed the food but made no move to take the items from Katherine’s hands.

  Katherine sat down and peeled open the chips. She popped one in her mouth and then angled the open bag toward Celeste. “Yum, yum.”

  Celeste took an audible breath, and her hand went to her mouth. “So much fat and sugar,” she said. Her voice was lower than a whisper, more like an escaped thought.

  “Which you need to live. Am I right?” Katherine dropped the bag on Celeste’s lap.

  Celeste placed a chip on her tongue. She sucked on it before chewing and swallowing. She took another chip, repeated the process. “I think the salt helps.”

  Katherine popped the soda’s tab, sparking a fizzle. Mini ginger bubbles danced in the air. “Here you go.”

  Celeste took a small sip, licked her bottom lip, nodded. “I’m okay,” she told Katherine. “I’m not sick. I just waited too long to eat.”